


Today, everything you want

by baehj2915



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Depression, Friends With Benefits, Introspection, M/M, Multi, POV Charles, Physical Disability, Recreational Drug Use, Self Loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 22:49:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1665350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baehj2915/pseuds/baehj2915
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of pre-DoFP Charles. </p><p> </p><p>Based on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uokp0aEiT-A">"Today" by Jefferson Airplane</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today, everything you want

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea and for whatever reason decided it couldn't wait until after DOFP. So yes, as of posting, I haven't seen the movie yet. This is based on the canon I've glimpsed from trailers and my own mind's eye. Waiting to see how it will be jossed is part of the fun. I don't really understand the phlebotinum for how/why Charles is walking, so I left everything as vague as possible. 
> 
> I just wanted to focus on what XMFC!Charles' devolution to DoFP!Charles would be like, and Charles/Hank feels.

Charles wakes up when the ache in his back flares into sharpness. He always waits a moment, to make sure he really is awake. Nothing happens but the repeating static of the record player’s empty hiss waiting to be played. He stretches without thinking. When he moves a flutter of confused synapses light up his right leg. The tissue that feels woven into the tissue that doesn’t. He can feel in patches. This part of his thigh, but not that. That ache in his back, but not this numb spot. 

The injections are working. Slowly. 

Working in the sense when he thinks about standing or flexing his foot, most of the time he can do it. Feeling his muscles and tendons flex with the corresponding motion, though—that is less reliable. There are times when he can see his foot planted on the floor, take a step, and not feel it the whole way. His foot will be dead. The effort will feel like shards of glass in his knees and his back. But he still can remain standing. 

It’s dangerous. 

That little refrain is forever etched in his mind in Hank’s voice. 

It’s dangerous. Be careful. Don’t rush. It’s dangerous. 

It takes all Charles’ strength not to snap back that it’s just toddling across the floor. That everything in the world is dangerous. That there’s no reason to be careful when there’s nothing to care for. 

He doesn’t say that however. He’s unsure of how true it all is, for one. He’s never sure about what he thinks now. At least he cares about Hank enough not to say it. It’s a low bar to hurdle. To refrain from verbally abusing his only remaining friend, but it’s there. It’s the loftiest of goals Charles can achieve most days. 

He reaches to the corner of the couch where he’d thrown his cane. It’s a little too far and it hurts to reach, but he needs to get up. He needs to play another record. He needs to hear the shuffling of his own feet. He needs to roll a joint. He needs to shift the dust in this mausoleum. He needs to make some kind of noise. 

There are thirty empty rooms and corridors bearing down on him right now. It’s too much. 

By the time he’s standing his hands are sweating and his lower back is in agony. He waits a moment and prays he stays upright. That patchy, swaying sensation returns to his legs tenfold. He doesn’t know how he’s staying up, but he is. 

“It’s dangerous,” he says over a nervous laugh, pushing his numb, left foot forward. “Increased mobility, lowered sensitivity.” 

He navigates the edge of the rug and the end of the couch, white-knuckling his cane all the way to the record player, which is very fortunately situated next to the bar cart. 

Charles lets out a sigh of relief, and rewards himself for making the fifteen feet to the record player with a little scotch. The curtains aren’t drawn all the way but the light streaming in doesn’t tell him it’s anything other than not night. He doesn’t remember eating, but he doesn’t feel hungry either. 

It probably doesn’t matter in the long run, but Hank won’t nag him about it if it’s after noon. 

The nearest stack of records are newer ones. The ones left from the children. Mostly Sean’s. He plays those most of the time. His old cases are further away and they bring back unsavory memories. Dancing with Raven in their living room in Oxford. Worse yet, sitting with Erik in Charles’ bedroom. 

If he’s feeling particularly sadistic, he’ll clamber over the stacks of old books and records and look for some Billie Holiday—Erik’s favorite. 

As it is, he’s not quite ready to unleash that special level of torture, so Jefferson Airplane it will be. All he has to do for that is get over the lump of bile in his throat think of Sean’s initials written on the sleeve, and the memory of children talking about Congress and the mutant problem over their albums, when there was still hope the mansion could be a safe place for them. 

His hand hesitates on the tone-arm for a minute. He thinks about breaking it. For spite. Because it would be easy. Because it would be something to break. Because he wants so badly at times to be destructive—to see if that truly is the inverse feeling to being broken. 

But then he’d be alone with the silence again, so he doesn’t. 

He switches the speed to 78, puts the record down on the platter, and sets the needle down carefully so it doesn’t scratch. He turns the volume all the way up. The opening repetitive strain of drum and guitar puts up a wall between him and the abundant quiet once again. 

Once he’s turned back toward the couch, he hesitates for a moment, thinks about the time he would take to walk across the room and walk back, but decides sitting on the couch for an indeterminate amount of time avoiding his research, Hank, and the news, all while straight, would be too much to handle. 

He doesn’t know what he was thinking, stashing his pot in his desk drawer the other day. He had a particularly low pain day and used it to traipse around the bottom floor with temerity—but then Hank came down the hallway. The guilt hit him harder than the logistics of having to eventually walk across the study to retrieve it again. 

But he managed his way there and stuffed his lighter and bag of weed—surprised and delighted to see two pre-rolled joints amongst the papers— into his robe pocket.

Unfortunately, the walk back to the sofa is not as uneventful as the walk away had been. He doesn’t pick his foot up high enough and slips over the edge of the carpet. He tries to catch himself with his cane, but his knee hits the edge of the coffee table and he goes down like dead weight. The pain rings sharp through him like a note off a tuning fork. 

Charles closes his eyes tightly, tightens his fist, and forces himself to stay still until the pain lessens to a slow throb. His knee took the worst of it, but the rest of his pre-existing aches only intensify. The patches of numbness seem to crackle against the parts of him that are actively sending pain impulses to his brain. 

When he takes a breath and opens his eyes, he realizes he is not clutching his cane. That’s been thrown to his right. He is halfway bent around the leg of the coffee table. 

On impulse, he tries to reach out telepathically to Hank, but remembers he can’t. The side effect of his injections shrink his telepathy, or whatever part of his brain that had been able to read the waves of other people’s thoughts. He can barely sense Hank as a tiny flicker in his mind. Reaching feels akin to trying to move rusted gears. 

For a moment he contemplates pulling himself forward by his arms, and trying to crawl up the couch that way, but he’s on his back. He’d have to turn over, pull himself on the couch without just pulling off the cushions, and then turn back over. The way he’s angled around the coffee table would make that difficult, but he could try to push it out of the way a bit. 

Instead he just sighs and falls back too hard against the floor. 

His already bleak mood is souring enough that he’s willing to cede the minor civility of furniture to the laying on the floor, until either the pain diminishes enough or Hank finds him. For a moment he imagines Erik standing up over him, wondering what he’d say, how disappointed he’d be Charles isn’t even trying to get himself up. 

It forces a jagged peel of laughter out of Charles’ throat. 

“How far the mighty have fallen,” he mocks. Erik would probably say something callous and unaffected like that. 

Charles finds it particularly ridiculous from his vantage point of the floor that he actually did once consider himself mighty. It is laughable how he wandered through life with confidence and assurance. He took beatings as a child without a second thought, knowing one day Kurt would receive justice, knowing it would spare Raven. He fought with Cain, eager to prove in some way Cain’s hatred was inferior to his righteousness. He took in Raven, and Erik, and Hank, and all the kids and rudderless mutants he’d found, sure he could unlock their abilities. He escaped from conflicts, won favor, and got his way because of his power. 

He got so far without ever seeing how he was as breakable and doomed as everyone else. 

Being honest with himself, he knows it wasn’t getting shot in Cuba that knocked him off his pedestal. It was meeting Erik. 

That was the first sign of danger. Charles never even realized until after he’d gone that all his fascination and affection and respect for Erik had been symptoms of a much greater disease than lack of foresight. Loving Erik was a deep, deep sickness that fooled him into believing he could fix Erik. 

He’d been so full of love and hope he didn’t think about the possibility of being rejected. He didn’t think there were people who would refuse his help, who would refuse to be saved. 

Charles finds it hilarious now the ability that gave him so much sight could never cure his own, inherent blindness. 

He also finds that he regrets his record choice when the refrain of “ _Don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love?_ ” starts to play. But there’s no way he’s getting off the floor before the song is over. 

Besides, if he properly avoided everything that reminded him of Erik he would have to be in a coma. 

With no small sense of irony, and ignore a wry Raven-like curl of disapproval, he reaches into his bathrobe pocket to finish the business he’d hoped to achieve in the first place. He can’t be in a coma, but he can be in a haze of reefer that will at least help pass the time until his pain recedes to a manageable level. 

He lights his first joint and by the time “Today” is popping underneath the needle, he’s light and relaxed with only a low, buzzing pain in his injured knee. 

It’s his favorite song on this album. Not too jarring, and easy on his high. It makes him feel like he used to feel. Sanguine and eager. Or at least it once did. Lying on the floor now, he feels as though there’s something lurking in the words. The words aren’t peaceful anymore and he fears they never will be again. 

When the record sings, “ _I’m so full of love, I could burst apart and start to cry_ ,” something stalls in Charles’ throat. The sun coming in from the windows gets so much brighter, unshakeable from his eyes. It’s blinding him and he can’t look anywhere but up. 

And for a moment he can feel a desperate grip on the back of his neck, one large heavy hand weighing down his chest, while his lower half drains into an endless pit of sand. His throat aches and he wants to say something, but the words stick there. He can’t get them out and he _is_ going to burst apart. The words are going to crack him open. He knows he should’ve said them earlier. Should have said them better. Should have figured it out sooner. But he didn’t. He can’t get to them. They keep slipping through his fingers.

He’s going to break open and die on this beach. 

He reaches out to grab something, but it isn’t there. There is nothing but dust motes hanging in the air. 

Charles wakes up again at the clatter of metal and “Oh God—Charles!” 

It takes him a moment to realize that’s not a part of the song. The record has stopped playing again, leaving a clicking buzz in its place. 

“Charles, are you alright?” 

Instantaneously, Hank is hovering over him, eyes darting back and forth over him. He frowns at the bag of weed fallen by Charles’ side. 

“What happened? Why are you on the floor?” 

Charles tries to shrug nonchalantly, but now he aches for more than the usual reasons, like lying on the floor for an unspecified amount of time. 

“I fell.” 

Hank sighs, snatches Charles’ pot, as though he’s going to fight Hank for it, and hastily pockets it. “I don’t think it’s very wise to walk around and smoke this stuff, Pr—Charles. You haven’t been back on your feet very long.”

“I fell first, I’ll have you know. I thought I’d simply take advantage of my horizontal position.” 

Hank’s face furrows in confusion. “You got… stoned? On the floor? Weren’t you able to—Can you feel your feet?” 

“Yes. I’m just bruised, Hank. I didn’t re-paralyze myself.”

“Okay, but do you need to—“

“Please, Hank, I just fell. It’s not the end of the world.” 

A touch of desperation escapes from Hank’s tone. “But you couldn’t get back up.”

Hank’s been with him so long, Charles sometimes forgets how much Hank hero-worshipped him in the beginning. How he immediately and implicitly trusted Charles to know better and make the right decisions. And how that still lingers. 

Charles squeezes Hank’s shoulder as reassuringly as he is able. “Well now that you’re here, perhaps we can get me vertical again.”

Hank nods, happy with a task to perform, and indulges Charles in helping him to stand, when he could just as easily pick Charles up. Charles is achy again, and stiff. His knee and coccyx are throbbing, and will probably hurt worse tomorrow, but he hobbles the few feet to the couch attached to Hank’s arm. 

Once Charles is sat down, Hank retrieves and clanking tray of food he’d set down, which must be what woke Charles. There are a lot of vegetables with chicken and rice. It doesn’t make him nauseous, but he doesn’t feel hungry either. He knows he’s been eating because Hank makes sure of it, but he hasn’t felt hungry in a while and it sits worryingly on the periphery of his consciousness. He wonders if it’s a side effect of the injections or simply not wanting many things anymore.

Hank sits next to him and starts to eat.

“I think I made some progress today on a treatment that won’t inhibit your telepathy so much.”

Charles nods and doesn’t say he prefers it this way. The crushing silence notwithstanding, for the first time in his life he can’t hear everyone else’s pain and worry. He can’t feel all the lies and malice. He feels numb and fuzzy and unburdened. 

He’s known two other telepaths than himself. Emma Frost was so jaded and disgusted by the world that she saw no qualms with exterminating the world so their filthy thoughts wouldn’t touch hers. Jason Stryker was so warped by his isolation and enamored of his power that he thought he could be a god amongst men, and torture people to his whims. And Charles failed in helping either of them to seek rehabilitation.

He’s beginning to think that no good can come from telepathy. 

He doesn’t tell Hank this. 

Charles pokes a carrot with his fork. “Is this lunch or supper?” 

Hank paused and tried to avoid looking at Charles pityingly. “You said you were going to get lunch for yourself. That’s why… I wouldn’t have left you alone so long if I knew.“

Charles waves him off. “It’s fine. I must have eaten something. I fell asleep after...”

“After you got stoned?” 

Charles gives him a challenging look, to see if does the job of dropping the drug topic, and seems to take. He feels mildly pleased that he still manages that level of authority. 

Hank doesn’t bring it up again until well after dinner and Charles is showered, on his way to read something until he’s too tired to keep his eyes open. He thought Hank had decided to drop the matter entirely. So when Hank shows up to his room again, under the guise of checking on him, he straightens himself up on the bed and places his bets on the tension in Hank’s shoulders. 

“Did you want to stay here tonight, Hank?” 

Hank starts, cheeks going a little red, but nods without speaking. He undresses, unbuttoning his shirt and placing his glasses on Charles’ dresser. Then he remembers the baggie of weed in his pocket and throws that on the dresser too, not sparing Charles a disparaging look.

Charles can see the moment where he commits to making a discussion out of it, fumbling with his belt. 

“How do you keep getting this stuff anyway? And why?” 

Even without telepathy, Charles has no problem believing that Hank has never procured illegal drugs in his life. 

“I haven’t stopped going to the city entirely. You know that.” 

“Why though?” Hank says, pretending to be too busy untying his shoelaces to look up at Charles. 

Charles remembers his first ever toke, with a boy named Billy Washington in prep school, after he’d returned from his mother’s funeral. 

“It’s a high quality anesthetic.” 

Hank puts his shoes neatly parallel to the side of the dresser, and places his rolled up belt on top of them. He’s doing it slowly so he has time to understand why Charles is doing this, but he won’t. 

“We have pain medication here. If your pain level is increasing I need to be made aware of that, Charles.”

Charles shakes his head. “It’s not that kind of pain.” 

He doesn’t know how to explain. Rather, he doesn’t how to explain to Hank without exposing the man he truly is now. He wishes he could be the man he was years ago that did. But then, that man was never as capable and right as had Charles thought. That was the whole reason he was where he was. 

He could tell Hank that he stopped finding hope and inspiration in the world some time ago. He could explain that being in love with a man he hates, a man who murders and abandoned him without remorse, physically hurts every time he thinks about it. He could say that he winds away hours drinking and smoking because being sober gives him too much time to dwell on his failures. That when he’s sober he want to scream, wants to destroy things, wants to die. That being awake is more unbearable than the pain in his spine. That he’s afraid all his wants now are to hurt himself. He could tell Hank every successive failure of the last decade just shows he deserves all the pain and loneliness. 

Charles has let down the only people loved and the people who depended upon him. He let Raven and Erik go to murder in the name of the mutant race. He couldn’t keep Stryker from dedicating himself to the anti-mutant lobby. He couldn’t keep the children who came to the school safe. He’s kept no promises. He has helped no one. 

He’s a man without value or respect, and deserves none. 

He could tell Hank all that, but that would ruin everything. It’s a tender thing, this relationship. Hank, inexplicably, still has so much faith that Professor Xavier will recover and fix them and help mutantkind. Hank stays for that hypothetical one day in the future when Charles will make everything right. 

Charles needs Hank to stay, despite what he has become. 

There is too much of Charles that is a sad, selfish monster to tell Hank the truth. As disappointed and frustrated as Hank can be with Charles, he’s never hated him. Hank has never left him. He needs Hank to continue to love him and have faith in him, no matter how misguided. 

“Take your trousers off and come here,” he says through Hank’s aborted, vexed sigh. 

Dutifully, he does, and turns off all the lights but the one on Charles’ bedside table. When he inches up to Charles’ side under the covers, leaning his head against Charles’ shoulder, Hank says, “Is it Him? I saw the paper this morning.”

There’s a tension in the silence, while Hank waits to be reassured. 

This is their relationship now. During the day, Hank takes care of Charles. He has helped him adjust to the paralysis and out of it. Makes plans to fix their mutations, revitalize the school, get them fit enough so they can help mutants again one day. It’s hard work and he does it mostly by himself, as Charles finds himself increasingly unable to face the world. 

And then at night he needs to be comforted. Maybe deep down Hank suspects things will never truly be the way they were before, that Charles can’t be fixed. Maybe he’s simply tired of feeling alone and unwanted. For whatever reason, Hank needs to be consoled and set at ease with Charles’ reassurances to make it through the next day the way Charles needs a drink. 

But Hank is smart enough to know the answer to the question. 

Of course it’s Erik. It’s always Erik. 

When Charles doesn’t say anything, Hank swallows nervously and says, “Do you still love him?” 

Charles traces his hand down Hank’s shoulder and arm, brushes over his stomach. It’s a difficult question he honestly never thought Hank would ask. 

He has never divulged much about the true nature of his relationship with Erik, because it’s difficult to understand. It’s difficult for even Charles to understand. And he’s certain Hank thinks that Charles and Erik were lovers. 

After all, Charles and Hank get each other off on a regular basis and have never shared a tenth of the tension Charles and Erik had. 

But Charles had never been done anything more physical with Erik than grappling on the beach in Cuba. They had touched each other constantly and unnecessarily, but never kissed, let alone made love. 

Yet the answer to the question is undeniably _yes_. 

Charles still loves Erik. He loves him desperately and mournfully and with his whole being. He loves Erik more than he’s ever loved anyone else. It surprises him still, how much he wants him back, how badly he’d simply like to go back to the moment they met and redo everything. 

Charles also hates Erik with as much passion as he loves him. 

He never had so much passion in his life as when Erik came into it. 

Before Erik, Charles had his fair share of sexual encounters. He wouldn’t say excessive, but more than most people. He was gifted with curiosity and verve and the ability to assess whether his propositions would be welcome or not, so he took advantage of that. He had slept with men and women and people who were less than comfortable with either designation. None of them had been meaningless, but none of them had been lasting either. Sex had been fun and carefree.

Then he met Erik. 

His relationship with Erik was intimate from the very first brush of minds. More intimate than any partner he’d ever made love. 

Which is perhaps the problem. 

The potential had always been there. Charles could feel it radiating from Erik from the beginning. An impulse that only grew, for the both of them, the longer they knew each other. There’d been many moments in hotel rooms, being each other’s company during long car trips, gazing at each other across the chessboard, that Charles had known if simply leaned forward to kiss Erik they would have wound up in bed together. 

Yet he refrained. Later, he’d thought. One day. When Erik was less damaged, less angry at the world.

He’s doomed to wonder now what it would be like if they had made love. Would it have been intense and angry and cathartic? Would it have been slow and passionate and transformative? Would it have warmed Erik to him more? Would Erik have listened to him that day on the beach and put down those missiles if Charles had sucked his cock the night before? 

Would that be better or worse than the way things are now?

Or would it have changed nothing? Erik would have still fought him, still sure that humans needed to die for their transgression, and still walked away into a different future, away from Charles. 

And then would Charles be more broken-hearted than he is now? Would he feel more or less angry and betrayed every time Magneto’s name was mentioned in an article about radical mutant terrorism? If Charles had touched Erik’s body as intimately as his mind, would he miss him more desperately? 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything anymore, but what he has in front of him.

What he has now is an empty school. A resumé of failures for the cause of peace. A family that’s all dead now, or loathes him. And injections that allow him to walk some days, feel some days, use his ability some days, but not others. 

What he has now is love for a man who he hates, a man who murders and believes he’s righteous, who has gone out to prove mutants are everything Charles has said they aren’t. 

What he has now is Hank. And he thanks God for Hank. Because Hank is nothing like Erik; because Hank never has and never will look at Charles with the passion Erik did. Because Hank takes care of him. Because Hank stays. Whether it’s the illusion of constancy, the loyalty, or simply a reminder of when life was better, Charles needs Hank to stay more than he could ever admit. 

Charles breathes in deeply and reaches for the lotion on his bedside table, warms it in his hands, and smiles at Hank, like the question means nothing to him. He reaches down into Hank’s boxer shorts and caresses his cock. Hank’s breathing increases as he hardens under Charles’ hand. 

“No,” Charles says confidently, definitively. To his own ears, he sounds authoritative, even while stroking Hank off. “I’m sorry I frightened you today. I overestimated myself. I’ll be more careful. I promise.” 

Hank smiles, though it’s distracted. He tries to return the touch, but Charles doesn’t need it. He’s still unresponsive most of the time. And he doesn’t want be aroused. That’s not why he does this. 

He does let Hank kiss him though. The kissing is nice, sweet. Devoid of bite and hunger. 

Charles is still stroking Hank through his orgasm when he says, “Everything will be better tomorrow. We’ll be better tomorrow.” 

Whatever different kind of man Charles is now, one thing remains the same: he always was and remains a very good liar.

**Author's Note:**

> ~*~
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the wallowing and self loathing!


End file.
